Free Software

(a.k.a. "Libre Software" or "Open Source")

During PrepCom3, a regular request was for a reference document on Free
Software and its role in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).
This document seeks to provide such reference.

Free in Free Software is referring to freedom, not price. Having been used
in this meaning since the 80s, the first documented complete definition
appears to be the GNU's Bulletin, vol. 1 no. 1, published February 1986. In particular, four freedoms
define Free Software:

The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.

Placing restrictions on the use of Free Software, such
as time ("30 days trial period", "license expires January 1st, 2004")
purpose ("permission granted for research and non-commercial use") or
geographic area ("must not be used in country X") makes a program
non-free.

The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to
your needs.

Placing legal or practical restrictions on the
comprehension or modification of a program, such as mandatory purchase
of special licenses, signing of a Non-Disclosure-Agreement (NDA) or -
for programming languages that have multiple forms or representation
- making the preferred human way of comprehending and editing a program
("source code") inaccessible also makes it proprietary (non-free).
Without the freedom to modify a program, people will remain at the mercy
of a single vendor.

The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your
neighbor.

Software can be copied/distributed at virtually no
cost. If you are not allowed to give a program to a person in need,
that makes a program non-free. This can be done for a charge, if you so
choose.

The freedom to improve the program, and release your
improvements to the public, so that the whole community
benefits.

Not everyone is an equally good programmer in all
fields. Some people don't know how to program at all. This freedom
allows those who do not have the time or skills to solve a problem to
indirectly access the freedom to modify. This can be done for a
charge.

These freedoms are rights, not obligations, although respecting these
freedoms for society may at times oblige the individual. Any person can
choose to not make use of them, but may also choose to make use of all of
them. In particular, it should be understood that Free Software does not
exclude commercial use. If a program fails to allow commercial use and
commercial distribution, it is not Free Software. Indeed a growing number of
companies base their business model completely or at least partially on Free
Software, including some of the largest proprietary software vendors. Free
Software makes it legal to provide help and assistance, it does not make it
mandatory.

Terminology

English seems to be the only language in which such a strong ambiguity
exists between freedom and price. When translated into other languages, Free
Software becomes "logiciels libre" in French, "software libre" in
Spanish, "software libero" in Portugese, "Fri Software" in Danish or
whatever is the equivalent term in the local language referring to
freedom.

Open Source

On February 3rd 1998, in the wake of Netscapes announcement to release their
browser as Free Software, a group of people met in Palo Alto in the Silicon
Valley and proposed to start a marketing campaign for Free Software using the
term ``Open Source.'' The goal was to seek fast commercialisation of Free
Software and acceptance of Free Software by the companies and venture
capitalists of the booming new economy. As a means to this end, they made a
conscious decision to leave aside all long-term issues (such as philosophy,
ethics and social effects) related to Free Software, feeling these posed
obstacles in the way of rapid acceptance by economy. They proposed to focus
on technical advantages only1.

Often used in good faith by people who refer to what Free Software stands
for, the term "Open Source" - originally defined to mean the same thing as
Free Software in terms of licenses and implementation - has seen inflationary
usage. Nowadays, it is regularly used for everything between Free Software
and the highly proprietary "Governmental Security Program" (GSP) by
Microsoft2.

Libre Software

When the European Commission started dealing with Free Software on a
regular basis, they sought to avoid the ambiguity of the English word "Free
Software" and the misunderstandings of "Open Source" alike, which led to
the adoption of a third term which has popped up occasionally since around
1992: "Libre Software." This term has proven resistant to inflationary usage
and is still used in an identical way to Free Software. So it may pose a
solution for those who fear being misunderstood when speaking English.

Development

When thinking about Free Software, it should be seen as an encompassing
concept for a reliable, sustainable and dependable information and knowledge
society involving all stakeholders.

The price we are paying for the predominance of the proprietary software
approach is high. Because the proprietary software paradigm has a strong,
system-inherent monopolising tendency 3 and software permeates all areas of
economy, northern economies suffer and southern countries are given the
choice between exclusion or co-suffering in total dependence. That is why
breaking up Microsoft without a change in paradigm would not improve the
situation significantly. Free Software, on the other hand, brings back
competition while allowing cooperation among companies, people, and
governments. All of these equally available and empowering to all the
peoples.

While minorities remain at the mercy of large multinational companies
regarding support for their culture and language when using proprietary
software, Free Software gives them freedom to modify all software according
to their needs. Thus, Free Software also allows building a sustainable local
hard- and software industry independent from monopolies and large
multinationals. Of course cooperation with large companies is possible and
may be useful, but while dependency is the price to pay for such cooperation
in proprietary software, Free Software provides independence.

Equality

The design, development and use of software is increasing in all societies.
Increasingly, access to software is largely determining our capabilities for
education, communication, work and even social networking. This includes
building social movements, promoting citizenship and transparent democracy as
well as general governmental and health services.

Software in general has grown into northern societies to a very large extent
and if development policies are successful, this will also be true for
southern societies at some point in time. Therefore software must be
considered a cultural technique, sometimes even a cultural good.

For all central cultural techniques, we have to ask who should be put in
control of it. Proprietary software puts large northern multinationals in
control4. Free Software
makes this cultural technique equally available to all the peoples.

Human Rights

For those who are connected - and we surely hope this will mean all the
peoples at some point - human rights of participation in culture, freedom of
speech and opinion are influenced to a large extent by their control over the
software they use, as are freedom of association and movement. Software forms
the medium. Unlike the proprietary approach, Free Software gives each person
full control about their personal information space. Although this alone is
not sufficient to grant privacy and security, it is a necessary
prerequisite.

Preventing Technocracy - upholding democracy

Legislation should be developed by democratically elected representatives in
a transparent way. Even in situations where this is true, rights that cannot
be exercised remain empty. Granting rights on paper does not mean people will
have the means of exercising them.

The complexity of modern systems alone makes it a difficult task to uphold
democracy in the digital domain, but the overall intransparency of
proprietary software makes it impossible. Unless you are using Free
Software, the rights you can or cannot exercise are determined by the
proprietary software vendor - it is the vendors decision alone, a decision
that nowadays is often given precendence over the democratic legislative
process.

Good examples are the European Copyright Directive (EUCD) and Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), both implementations of the "The World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty" (December 1996).
While the DMCA already gained notoriety for enabling censorship of
Scientology-critical sites in the United States5, the German implementation of the EUCD is
silently making the right to fair use inaccessible. Although laws clearly
state that customers have the right to copy a CD for their car stereo or even
a friend, those who exercise this right on so-called "copy protected" CDs
or on any DVD now risk punishment. And if you think this is where it ends,
feel free to read the EFF paper on so-called "Trusted Computing" (TC).

Proprietary software effectively puts an area that was previously governed
by democratically elected representatives into the hand of corporations,
therefore establishing technocracy6.

Summary

All of our hard work to defend and promote human rights, gender equality,
rights of the disadvantaged, a free media, privacy and security, digital
solidarity and other issues is in danger of having been for naught if the
information age is based on proprietary software.

Free Software alone is certainly not enough to overcome all problems - but
it is a necessity to empower people to exercise the rights we are fighting
for in the information societies.

In this program
governments and intergovernmental organisations pay substantial fees for a
superficial look at some parts of Windows sourcecode in special Microsoft
facilities. This may increase "felt security" but is essentially useless -
especially since they do not even know whether what they looked at is what
they have on their computers. And of course it does not give them
freedom.

Explanation of these mechanisms will gladly be provided, if of interest.

Side note: Which should
not be understood as a good thing for people in the northern countries. It is
not.